Goldman Sachs Currency Traders Cho, Lim Said to Depart

By Michael J. Moore -
Feb 5, 2014

Steven Cho and Leland Lim, Goldman
Sachs (GS) Group Inc. partners in its currency-trading business, have
left the firm, according to a person briefed on the matter.

Cho was global head of spot and forward trading of G-10
currencies in New York, while Lim was co-head of macro trading,
which includes interest-rates and currencies, for Asia ex-Japan,
said the person, who asked to remain anonymous because the
departures weren’t public. Cho and Lim were both named partners
in 2010.

Regulators are probing whether traders at the world’s
largest banks colluded through instant-message groups to
manipulate benchmarks such as the WM/Reuters rates. Michael DuVally, a spokesman for New York-based Goldman Sachs, declined
to comment on whether the departures were related to any probe.
Cho didn’t return a call for comment, while Lim didn’t respond
to an e-mail.

Currency-trading revenue at the 10 largest global
investment banks declined 6 percent in the first nine months of
2013, according to industry analytics firm Coalition Ltd.
Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer Harvey Schwartz said the
currency business had “difficulty managing inventory” in the
third quarter as the firm posted its worst fixed-income trading
revenue since the financial crisis.

Cho worked under Guy Saidenberg, Goldman Sachs’s global
head of foreign-exchange trading, who remains in his role, the
person familiar with the matter said. Cho joined the firm in
1996 after previously working at Citigroup Inc., according to a
biography on the website of the nonprofit organization Apex for
Youth.